Atlas Cartography in Croatia

The position of Croatia at the contact of Mediterranean coast and Central and Southeast Europe aroused scientists and cartographers to investigate this region since the prehistoric times. As a result, many beautiful master-pieces in the fields of cartography have been done through the centuries. At the end of our century we have witnessed the disintegration of multinational states and the creation of a large number of smaller states, such as Croatia. All those changes contributed to the new geopolitical structure of Europe and to the fundamental alternation of the European map. For 45 years of so-called communist regime, Croatia was represented as a part of Yugoslavia, so the European knowledge about it has been very skimpy and partly inaccurate. This is an important reason to take a new, systematic, scientific and methodical approach based on the new concept and topics. In this paper the focus is on the new cartographic approach in the Cartographic Department of The Miroslav Krleža Lexicographical Institute.